Pardes Faculty Traveling

Tefilah Action Research Project

Ten Pardes Educator alumni participated in an action research
project in the area of tefilah in their schools in the Spring of 2011 .Simply
put, action research is learning by doing. Tefilah was chosen, as it
is, without a doubt, one of the key challenges in day schools. Each
of our researchers told a similar story (of attempts to engage students
who are generally disengaged with formal jewish prayer). Half of the
research was done in middle schools (grades 5-8) and half in high
schools. Our researchers included: Deborah Anstandig, Moshe Fisch, Sean
Herstein, Scott Kaplan, Shifra Kaufman, Sarah Margles, Reuven Margrett,
Yonatan Rosner, Aron Wolgel and Sarah Zollman.

The participants
learned a great deal from their individual experiments. We have taken their insights
and pulled out common findings helpful to the day school field. While some of
the findings may initially appear obvious, they are not – or schools would not
be structuring tefilah the way they do. Click here to read the full summary paper
which expands upon the findings – giving rich anecdotal evidence and much food
for thought. We would like to offer another opportunity to continue these
projects or fund new action research in tefilah in 2012-2013. If you are
interested, contact us.

The major findings
included:

A.The most common
finding was that giving students input into the tefilah experience was key to
their engagement.

Over and over we saw
that when students were given serious input into the nature of the tefilah
experience or the responsibility for making tefilah better, they took it
seriously and worked to make it happen. In the words of one researcher:

“ I found that when you give students the
space to ask questions and explore new ideas on their own, they have the
tendency to come back to you with profound and thoughtful experiences and ideas.I hoped to empower them to become more aware
and involved in their own prayer experiences.I truly believed that the best way to get students involved is by
asking. It worked!”

B.Student Leadership
within tefilah is key and needs to be built

Two of the research
projects had student leadership as the primary focus. The high school project trained leaders through a voluntary course in
prayer and leadership which took place over the course of a full-school year
(and had first started out as a club). The program, highly successful by any
measure, continues to evolve. It succeeded, but only because of recognition of
the need to build leadership and the work that went into doing so.

C.The Role of the
Adult is Significant (for better or for worse).

The Pardes graduates
who embarked on these action research projects are all people who are
personally knowledgeable and passionate about prayer. It is not surprising that
they reflected upon their own roles and raised numerous questions as to what is
the role of the teacher and what training/support he/she might need.

In one high school,
the person doing the research looked specifically at the difference it might
make by supporting the teacher minyan leaders. In a middle school that set-out
to change its minyan structure, the researcher noted that “one of the biggest
limitations of this project was taking into consideration our staff and their
abilities. For many of the teachers in the school, leading tefilah is not an
enjoyable aspect of their jobs. Many disclosed a level of discomfort with
tefilah and their own personal questions and challenges with God, the liturgy,
Jewish traditions, etc.

A number of the researchers
commented on the nature of student- teacher relationships as it impacted on
tefilah. ”If students see me as an enabler of tefilah rather than as a policer
of tefilah, that would be worthwhile.”

D.The Developmental
Stage of the students must be taken into account

A full picture of
the developmental issues concerning older students, particularly in regard to
their religious development, is a very important topic in and of itself, but is
beyond the scope of our research. Nevertheless, we want to share
some insights into this area based on the observations of the researchers and
the comments of the students.

Several of the researchers spoke of their
students’ difficulty with prayer: their questioning the existence or nature of
the God to whom they were to pray, issues of good and evil in the world, the
efficacy of prayer, etc. This was true not only for the high school students –
which we might expect - but for the older (grades 7 & 8) middle schoolers
as well.

Authority issues
also play a role. This results in a certain amount of “push-back”. Social issues
connect here as well. The peer group is very important to most young adults.

Peer pressure presents challenges. “For high
schoolers, maybe we are expecting too much to ask them to “connect to prayer”
certainly in their freshman or sophomore years?”

Additionally, a number of researchers asked a
fundamental question about a lack of connection between prayer experiences and
the “real” world in which they live.

A lack of
clear goals andaccountability on the
part of students may contribute toapathy

Few schools have
well articulated goals for the time set aside for tefilah. If there were goals,
they did not seem to be clearly articulated and if articulated,
they still might not have buy-in from the students.

Even in places where students expressed a
desire to pray, many felt uncomfortable with their technical prayer skills.
Quite a number of students (spanning all ages in this research) expressed
displeasure with not knowing what they were saying in tefilah or that they had
been doing the same thing year after year – and still hadn’t gotten it. Schools generally do not assess prayer skills or knowledge in a formal way.

This lack of academic/performance accountability seemed to often
lead to a general apathy (most often in grades 7 and up). In several settings,
the teachers saw most students sitting quietly, but unengaged, and at worst,
disrespectful or difficult to control.

E.There did not seem
to be a direct correlation between knowledge of the prayers and the engagement/enjoyment
by the students and visa versa

The knowledge
students gained in studying about prayer did not always lead to greater
enjoyment or more engagement with the tefilah. The converse was also true. Actually,
a correlation was shown between those who thought they had learned more (whether
or not they actually had) and their connectedness to tefilah.

The lack of
attention to logistical issues and the physical surroundings (siddurim, the
room in which tefilah is held, the number of participants involved, etc.) can
undermine the prayer experience for our middle schoolers, while the attention
to these details can enhance the experience. When insufficient attention is
paid to the surroundings, students may see it as reflecting a lack of
seriousness about prayer. The same is true when they feel that tefilah is being
approached with insufficient respect. While this may seem obvious, clearly it
was an issue in several of the projects.

III.
Conclusion

Above all else, we
have learned what we knew intuitively; that prayer is hard for everyone as
isdeveloping a clear articulation of
our goals. Not only are we challenged by the goals and the material, but our
students are not always in a place where they want to engage these challenges.
In the words of one researcher, “these students live complicated lives.
Pressures from home, peer relationships, physical changes and self-esteem
issues all come together to make the adolescent years potentially very
difficult to navigate”. Another teacher remarked that she had re-thought
her erroneous assumption that [it is the] good kids [that] like tefilah. ”All
people struggle with tefilah and the teenager with 10 periods ahead, social
concerns, potential familial or personal issues, all arise in the 40 minutes of
personal time to engage in tefilah.”

These research
projects have not only highlighted the challenges, but have pointed us in some
positive directions as well. Based on the research described above, we need to:
find more ways to get student input, empower and promote student leadership,
address the role of teachers and offer them support, clarify our goals, and pay
greater attention to physical space and developmental issues. Furthermore,
other areas call out for additional research. We devote time in school to
tefilah, which in itselfis a reason to
make sure that it is done well. Yet,we
are also hoping to develop life-long pray-ers. To do so, we need to give the
subject of tefilah in schools, its due diligence.